Day: February 19, 2008

Letter Re: More About the Chimney Fire Hazard

We just just learned that the beautiful house we had built on our 20 acre Michigan property burned to the ground. I want to urge all readers to have their chimneys checked yearly. The house had a wood furnace in the basement and a well-built 3-flue chimney yet in a state with deep frost, foundations can settle. The new owners never spent the money to have the chimney cleaned/inspected yearly as we had advised them to. Yet they just spent over $40,000 on granite countertops and all that fancy stuff. “Penny wise and Pound foolish!” My brother-in-law lives next door …


Four Letters Re: My Preparedness Plans Just Took an Unexpected Turn

Jim: While I cannot speak to diabetes, except to say that we use natural sweeteners such as maple syrup and honey and maintain a balanced meal, we do have a lot of hands-on with the gluten-free diet. Our daughter has gluten sensitivity, as well as intolerance for corn and soy. I encourage the mother who wrote to you to examine corn as a possible allergy. It tends to go with gluten sensitivity. This has made our situation more difficult as the dynamic duo of wheat and corn are pervasive, they are present in products that you would never imagine and …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Credit Default Swaps Are Next to Take the Crunch Test. Does this sound familiar?    o o o A reader sent me an e-mail to chide me for mentioning that hedge fund redemption suspensions were on the increase. He said: that I was being “an alarmist” because “those [redemption suspensions] are still rare.” Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and state publicly that I believe that they are going to become a lot less rare in the immediate future. Even large hedge funds are not immune. For example, just recently one of CitiGroup’s hedge funds announced a …